Mainland Italian Ndrangheta crime syndicate made £44billion in a year - more than fast food chain McDonalds and Deutsche Bank made combined
Alleged broker Gregorio Gigliotti said he want to dissolve people in acid
Gang has an exceedingly violent past - one member was fed to pigs alive
Those on the run from the law known to hide in a network of secret tunnels
By Hannah Roberts In Rome For Mailonline
A savage mafia mobster arrested in New York for his part in a transcontinental cocaine trafficking network boasted to his wife that he ate the heart and kidney of a rival who owed him money, it is alleged.
Gregorio Gigliotti was the alleged U.S. broker between the Ndrangheta - Italy's richest and most brutal organized crime syndicate - the New York mafia families and the South American drug cartels.
The group's turnover is $70 billion (£44billion) a year, according to a study last year, more than Deutsche Bank and McDonald's combined.
Prosecutors allege that he was talking about eating a human being, explaining in the arrest warrant: 'He had literally eaten the organs of the person as gesture of blatant contempt to the victim.'
The mob operative seemingly modeled himself on the brutal gangsters in the film Casino, the wire taps reveal.
In another phone tap Gigliotti threatened to carry out a violent scene from the Martin Scorsese film in which two characters get beaten with baseball bats and buried alive, prosecutors claim.
'Do you remember the movie Casino?' he asked his son in a recorded conversation. 'Do you remember what happened to the two brothers? This is what I have to do to him.'
The gang member even threatened to murder his own colleagues, according to investigators in Italy.
He allegedly claimed he would make two alleged Ndrangheta members Franco and Pino Fazio who crossed him 'disappear' by 'dissolving them in acid.'
Gigliotti was angry with the brothers, who falsely made him believe that a Ndrangheta colleague had not settled a debt for a consignment of drugs purchased, prosecutors allege.
Recorded by a police wiretap in the car, Gigliotti told his wife 'He and his brother are .. the godfather must give me 35,000.
'But listen, they need to disappear.. and it will be both of them together ..one brother will fall the ground .and the other will not understand what is happening .. and then we will see, they will be dissolved in acid. .. I will show them.. they have no shame, they will have nothing. '
The arrest warrant said: 'These words need no further explanation, revealing a disturbing personality that would push for such serious consequences for a debt of a few thousand euro.'
Subsequently, however, the relationship between Gigliotti and the Fazios continued, the investigation showed with the brothers his link to the Ndrangheta clans, it is alleged.
This level of brutality is not unusual in the group, based in Calabria, the 'toe' of Italy in the deep south. In 2013 one Ndranghetista admitted feeding a rival alive to pigs in retaliation for the murder of a godfather.
As part of a feud that had been going on since the 1950s one gangster was heard on the phone remembering: 'It was so satisfying hearing him scream. Mamma mia he could scream.
'I didn't see a f****** thing left. People say sometimes they leave something. In the end there was nothing left. Those pigs could certainly eat.'
Although the Sicilian mafia Cosa Nostra has found worldwide notoriety as the subject of the Godfather films the Ndrangheta has emerged in recent years as the most ruthless and wealthiest crime syndicate in Italy.
Based on close family ties and blood bonds, its tentacles have spread across the globe through emigration from Italy. It now has established bases in Australia, Spain and the US as well as Canada and Latin America and may have as many as 60,000 members according to a recent study.
The South American link has proved particularly useful - it is also the only one of the three main Italian mafias to do business with the South American cartels even acting as an intermediary for other mafia bosses.
Despite its international network, the roots remain obscure. Informants are rare due to close family ties. The members swear oaths for life in masonic rituals using religious symbolism and codes.
What is known is that the crime syndicate began in the mid nineteenth century as bandits who also developed organized methods of extortion and racketeering.
They later moved into kidnappings on an industrial scale, abducting wealthy businessmen or their children, from northern Italy and holding them for ransom
The group kidnapped around 600 people between the 1960s and 1990s holding many of them in caves on Aspromonte the craggy and inhospitable mountain that runs through the middle of the region. A cross on the mountain was the ransom drop point. Many of them were held for months in terrible conditions and some were never seen again, even if their relatives did pay.
The most famous was the kidnap of John Paul Getty's teenage grandson. His ear was chopped off after his grandfather refused to pay.
Billionaire former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was allegedly forced to employ a stable manager from the Sicilian mafia and pay regular bribes as a guarantee against his kidnap by the Ndrangheta.
Later the syndicate moved into the more profitable area of drugs and are now thought to control some 80 per cent of Europe's cocaine imports.
In 2006, Italy's then interior minister blamed the assassination of a Calabrian politician on the local Ndrangheta, which he said was 'the most deep-rooted, the most powerful and the most aggressive of [Italy's] criminal organisations'.
They have also been shown to be ruthless, and insensitive even to some of the code of conduct other mafias broadly follow, such as not killing children or attacking priests.
Last year three-year-old Coco Campolongo was murdered by the Ndrangheta because his gangster grandfather was considering turning state witness.
The group go to extreme lengths to stop the police and judicial authorities from acting against them. In 2010 they planted a Yugoslavian bazooka near a courthouse in southern Italy as act of intimidation following a crack down and hundreds of arrests.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3073803/New-York-mobster-held-cocaine-smuggling-ring-Italian-mafia-boasted-wife-ATE-heart-kidney-rival-wanted-dissolve-two-acid-wiretaps-reveal.html#ixzz3Zk9Sn242
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